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Edmund Lester Pearson (1880-1937) was a librarian, columnist, and true crime writer. During the 1920s, Pearson served as publications editor for the New York Public Library and participated in the literary fray by writing columns on books for the Nation, the Dial, and The Saturday Review of Literature. His public reputation, however, stemmed from his sensational true crime studies, including his immensely popular Studies in Murder (1924) with its famous treatment of the Lizzie Borden case. His "Murder in Greenwich Village" from More Studies in Murder (1936) tells of an 1890s case in which Dr. Robert Buchanan was accused of murdering his wife after succumbing to the dissolute ways of the Village.

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In this letter to Wells, a popular and prolific writer of light verse and mysteries, Pearson discusses his approach to writing true crime. He explains that to bring this genre to prominence he has had to overcome some readers' mystification that older murders might be written about as fact rather than fiction.